So, I don’t know what has come over me. I always liked Elliott Smith, at some points more than others, but now I feel like I am going through an Elliott Smith renaissance. Of sorts. It all started the other night. I was listening to the iPod and one of his songs came on that has some wierd poetry beneath it. I tried to figure out what the poems were by putting some of the words I could make out into google. I found out that they were nonsense poems written by a friend of his like fifteen minutes before the song was recorded, but this information was on a site with all sorts of Elliott information and I just got sucked in reading all about him, because like I said, I was a fan, but not the hugest one, so a lot of the stuff was new to me.
The next day rolls around and I start listening a little closer to all of the songs I have on the iPod, in particular the songs on this live recording that my wife had gotten somewhere or other. Normally I don’t like live recordings. They give me the feeling of everybody else is having a good time at the show and all I get is to be stuck at home with a recording. But this recording, that I’d never really listened to before, is really phenomenal in that it’s incredibly clear, and the songs, in my opinion come across a lot more pure, for lack of a better word, than in studio.
I thought this recording might have been a special one of thing, but it turns out it is one of ninety that are on the archive.org website. Holy cow. Just for your information the show I’ve been listening to is from April 17, 1998 in Washington D.C.. Right now I am listening to June 2, 1998 in Stockholm, Sweden. The Washington show is better because it has the banter, but both are top notch.
And, one more thing. Lest you feel semi-guilty about robbing Elliott Smith’s estate by downloading or listening to this stuff for free, there are a few notes that his family pretty much encourages listening to this stuff:
Reported post from Charlie who runs the official site re conversation with Gary Smith, Elliott Smith’s father:
“while we were talking, we talked about sharing/trading elliott’s music and he thought it was important to mention it was ok to share or trade elliott’s music because elliott believed people should be able to trade musically with each other and that the family feels the same.”